As you know, I never got into TF2 or played many mp games until OW2. I’ve seen sniper gameplay in YouTube videos, but since I’ve never actually played him, I can only guess that he had to charge his shots same as widow.
So, my question is, can you confirm that. And if it is, in fact, different. How so?
I do know that Sniper has more weapons at his disposal plus the jar of… nevermind!
Yeah sniper had to charge his shots.
The main differences were that his scoped fully uncharged shots still did 150 damage. For reference, that’s over the max health of half the classes, and nearly fatal for all but the heavy weapons guy. This makes “quickscopes” much more dangerous than what Widowmaker does, particularly as the core of the team, the Medic, has 150 health.
A fully charged shot will do 450 headshot damage, enough to kill anyone in nearly all scenarios. It will also do 150 bodyshot damage, enough to kill the Medic in one shot.
To balance this, he had a bolt-action rifle that required a short reload after every shot. It also charged slower than Widowmaker’s rifle.
His main sidegrade rifles were:
Option 1) Do slightly less damage but no need to scope in to charge your shots
Option 2) Do reduced headshot damage, but charge your gun faster and apply a large damage multiplier on your target (like discord orb but worse).
Option 3) Charge slower, but every headshot kill increases the charge speed of your gun. This is my favourite sniper weapon, and have had killstreaks of up to 50 with it due to how lethal 150 damage rapid fire shots are.
He could one shot heavy here you can’t oneshot tanks 
Also when he is charges his location is known to others.
He also had no mobility, but for real you can’t really compare the two games, TF2 has a massively different balancing philosophy than OW2.
Indeed, there is a dot that appears on walls exactly where the sniper is pointing. Honestly wish they had it for widowmaker.
One thing to add: His optional rifle, the Machina (and my favorite reskin, the Shooting Star) deals more damage in bodyshot and has the ability to do penetration damage but at the cost of not being able to fire the rifle without scoping.
If you don’t want to use that particular “jar” i can recommend a different kind of jar filled with mutated bread soaked in green liquid.
Widowmaker is TF2 sniper without quickscopes (150 headshot at 0 charge) and noscopes (50 damage at any range). At least WM gets a grappling hook and wallhacks.
She also doesn’t have aim flinch, a crucial component of countering sniper.
Doesn’t stuff like Ashe’s firebomb apply aim punch on its own?
Sniper was busted in tf2 and kind of ruled the highlander format because he could quick scope 1 shot the medic. Widow has to at least partially charge to kill a light class, the sniper just needed to see you for a split second. Then dead.
Also tf2 has worlds less healing then ow so an instant 150 to any class is pretty big.
Kind of, but overhealed Soldier for example has 300hp… These are usually the vanguard of attackers.
He is more commited to the location he plays in, and has to be ultra aware of things he can’t see. As his direct counter in spy can show up any time and insta gib him with a back stab, While actively being invisible up till he is in close range.
Be it he has optional support like tools, and is also hanzo all in one depending on the load out.
Skill always beats luck, ya weasel
Takes a few seconds to charge to full damage, but 150 uncharged will kill any light class as well as Medic. Plus, all of sniper’s shots have no travel time except maybe the Machina. For this reason Sniper is the most popular class to use cheats on, and during the bot crisis EVERY SINGLE BOT was Sniper. Some cheaters will also go heavy, scout, spy, or soldier with projectile aimbot, but the last one is a bit rare to see.
Main difference between Widow and Sniper is that he lacks any real mobility, you can see where he’s aiming because of his laser dot while scoped in (smarter snipers will aim just out of view until someone comes into view), and he’s generally weak outside of a few niche moments.
Most sniper confident in theur ability to quickscope will use the Bazaar Bargain because it lowers the time to hit max charge for every headshot kill, some will use the AWPerhand for bragging rights, some will use the Machina for potential double kills as full charge shots pierce enemies (every shot leaves a tracer trail and you can’t shoot unscoped with it, so unless you can quickscope use a good secondary).
And those who are daring will use the Huntsman. Despite its generous hitbox detection on headshots it actually takes more skill to use a bow against an enemy Sniper with a gun.
he only has to charge his shots for heavy and soldier, the rest usually die to quickscope headshots, tf2 sniper is incredibly overpowered
The TF2 Machina sniper loadout is pretty much what Widowmaker is.
The TF2 “huntsmen” sniper is just TF2 being a “spamzo” , with no real skill involved (Sounds familiar).
As for Jar of something-rather. that is ana’s Nade. (oddly enough).
and a rifle that just goes into SMG mode is pretty much TF2 at that. without the weapons swap.
So yeah. Close to plagiarism if you ask me.
His charge mechanic is like a Snail with Narcolepsy to Widow’s Deathwish on the Autobahn.
But- he didn’t really need max charge to kill most classes as his base head shot damage is 150, which is 25-50 points short of lethal for all but one class.
On the other hand, a huge mechanic in TF2 is Overhealing- not temporary health on a 5 second buff, but a reliable stream available to any team with medics. so his potential outcomes with shootings character’s of all health pools is a little less one-note than widow.
He was in the lowest healthpool class alongside Scout and Engineer- which means more in TF2 because there’s a lot more things that can kill the lowest-health characters in one shot or “faster than you can react”.
And a lot of these things would make overwatch players cry because they’re fairly easy to hit people- like Rockets, Grenades, Flames, etc.
Imagine Cass shot firestrikes with splash damage from his revolver, and that’s about what it’s like.
Which relates to the next point that Sniper’s close-range game is between abysmal and unreliable depending on how amazing you are at short-range quick scoping. He has zero mobility and pitiful secondary weapons- if you think Widow’s SMG sucks, you haven’t witnessed the pellet guns that Sniper can pack. His melees can be dangerous depending on what he has, but he’s literally bringing knives to a rocket fight. He gets ran over very easily and doesn’t have a grappling hook to get away.
Sniper does have a charge mechanic like widow’s. It’s much slower than widow’s (about 3 seconds to fully charge iirc), but at the same time not as necessary. Sniper can scope in, shoot immediately, and do 150 dmg if it’s a headshot, which is enough to kill 5 of the 9 classes in most situations.
If he does fully charge a shot though, it does up to 450 damage on a headshot, which is enough to kill anybody aside from one or two very niche situations. Sniper automatically unscopes after every shot though, while widow does not.
It’s also worth noting that when sniper takes his shots, there is no visible bullet or tracer round from it unless you’re using one particular sidegrade of his. This makes quite a big difference, because you can basically take as many tries as you want to headshot somebody and they probably won’t react to dodge your shots unless they actually see you looking at them.
Just an FYI but two of the rifles you mentioned (Classic and Sydney Sleeper) are underpowered and not considered sidegrades. Serious Snipers used stock, the Bazaar Bargain, or the Hitman’s Heatmaker.
I used to main the Sydney Sleeper because it annoyed people and turned them yellow.
I usually hate playing snipers but in TF2 my fav loadout is Sydney sleeper & jarate. It made sniper fun to play. I sometimes go huntsman and if there is pyro that would be great.
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Sydney_Sleeper